Frugal GM Review: Adventurer Essentials (Iron Rations)

The other day I was perusing DriveThruRPG, like I am wont to do, and I came across the Adventurer Essentials series from Skortched Urf Studios. It caught my eye so I hazarded a purchase to give it a look.

On the surface I really like the idea of an in-depth look at an otherwise all-too-often ignored bit of required adventuring kit.

I don't know how many game I've been in where the last thing anybody bothered with was making sure you had enough food....well, anybody but the GM. A few lessons-learned and I always make sure my PC has adequate provisions.

This eight-page (of content) PDF goes into a little bit of detail regarding iron rations, those relatively inedible foodstuffs we buy for our PCs, but would never stoop to try out for ourselves unless we were really desperate, or maybe hard-core LARPers! The bit of general background transitions into several options for fantasy demi-human versions of iron rations, which, with the exception of the Dwarven variant, sound so much better than the standard fair. Rules are given for starvation and a brief discussion regarding magical means of sustenance is given. The PDF gives a few magical items and some interesting rules for using the survival skill and making your own rations.

This PDF is written for the d20 rules system, but easily adapted for anything else you'd prefer to play with. I particularly liked the way the author suggested arranging terrain types for determining difficulty for using survival checks. It is the one bit I'm most likely to borrow for a number of related tasks (like hunting, tracking, etc.).

One thing I definitely did notice when reading this PDF were a number of typos, including a simple addition error compounded in the next sentence by using a completely different number. I ended up re-reading that paragraph a couple of times trying to figure out the math and why things didn't add up. I thought maybe the second number was referencing some fact or figure from the sourcebooks that weren't mentioned.

Overall it was a decent enough download, but it wasn't enough to convince me to try out any of the rest of the series.

Free Map 029: A Long Underground River

This free map is an off-shoot of a personal map project I'm working on. The river will just be part of a much large cavern complex and, I hope, just one layer of a more ambitious map project.

Anyhoo, this map is probably the longest I've ever done, coming in at just a hair over two feet long!

I've detailed a bit of the process behind making this map in my previous post. Feel free to scroll down or just click on this link.

Like usual, click on the lead-in graphic or use this link to download the high-res file. I would ask that you let me know if/how you use the map.

Roughly 4" x 24"!

My Work in Progress for Another Long Underground River

A week or two ago I mentioned a large underground river map I was getting set to work upon. I had started with some USGS maps of a river I was familiar with and pieced together a number of maps to form one long chain of the river.

All I got to on that post was getting my scope outlined and kicked around a few ideas.

Today I went ahead and started working on my map.....and "finished" a version that I'll put up for free after this post.

The first thing I had to do was take my eight pages of PDF and stitch them together in Photoshop to get a more usable working file. After that I simply printed out a few pages so I could work on paper as much as possible....well, as much as possible for me.

Click for a much larger version

1) Using my relatively cheap DIY lightbox I roughly traced out the printed river sections. I wasn't too careful here because I wasn't looking for an exact copy of my source river map.

2) After scanning in my traces, stitching and then cleaning up the connections in Photoshop I ran the now large map (roughly 4" by 25") through Adobe Illustrator to get a nice, smoothed out series of map lines. Unfortunately there are a lot of weird artifacts introduced from where some of my lines were too weakly drawn or close together. If you look closely at the map above you can see some blobbish circles or overly thick connected lines.

3) Another trip through Photoshop to clean up the artifacts I run the file back through the same Inked Drawing tracing option in AI. This forms my real "base file" I get to work with from here on out. Steps 4-6 are more for making the free map and will probably be discarded on my finished map.

4) I go in and start coloring the river. since everything is black I have to go through and color in by hand all the areas where the river connects with the walls of the caves it passes through. The river channel sometimes has a wide bank and others in restricted to a narrow channel. Coloring actually takes a lot more time than expected even with the generous use of the Paint Bucket tool in Photoshop.

5) This next step is kind of easy. I just find an appropriate texture file to add in to the river channel. since this is an underground river, the river channel is rock. I find a rock texture I like and add it in.

6) Now I add my stippling texture. This time I did things a little different in making the heavy stipple extend 15 px out, the medium another 30px and the light 50px. These layers are stacked on top of each other with the heaviest on top of the medium, which is on top of the light. Once everything is done I merge all the layers and run the file through a different trace option in AI.

If you came straight-in to this post you might want to click on the free map post to get a better look at the whole map and get a free download.

Free GM Resource: Lord of the Rings Fonts

One of the many.....many things I collect & squirrel away for future gaming use is a good fantasy font. Now I don't use props all that often, but when I do I like to make them as good as I can. My handwriting looks much like it did back in 4th grade, so any written documents have to be be done on a computer so I can make them look as pretty or pretty ugly as needed.

This week's Free GM Resource was a lead from the folks over at the Kenzer & Company forums. It is a large collection of Lord of the Rings fonts gathered up by Pete Klassen. The collection is pretty sweet. I've seen plenty of Tengwar fonts here and there, as well as a few Dwarven fonts, but I don't think I've ever seen any Hobbit fonts or the awesome "Runic" font, which is basically the Latin/Roman alphabet (what I'm using now) gussied up to look like runes.

Pretty good stuff!

Free Map 028: A Small Inn

This free map is more of a work in progress, but I'm not quite sure which tact I'm going to take to finish this map. I might re-draw the whole thing, maybe do it in Dundjinni, or just color it all in.

This is a three-level inn where I didn't finish the top floor. The inn-keeper's room is the small one with a private office to the side and the large "opulent" room is off on the opposite side of the floor. I figured the space in between was just a nice, private dining/meeting area.

The main floor has a small kitchen, wrap-around bar, a few tables, and a small common room in the back.

The owner has dug out a large cellar of sorts beneath the floor, propping things up with some strong stone columns. This space is an impromptu stable for overnight guests.

I made this map for a special project and that map will be fairly small, so too much graphic detail will simply be lost. I already have a name, but since you'll probably need to finish off the upstairs you might want to rename it as well...

Like always, click on the lead-in graphic or use this link for the download.

Sandbox Adventure for $1 -Limited Time Offer-

This isn't a review per se, but more of a head's up that there is a good deal on an old-school adventure over at DriveThruRPG.

Valley of the Five Fires is an adventure from New Big Dragon Games. Until the end of the day it is a whopping $1.

$1!

Now I haven't had the time to do a thorough reading, much less a review, but this "adventure" looks pretty awesome. It is triple stated for old-school gaming (Oe, BX, & 1e), which means it is easy to convert to a lot of retro-clones as well.

A quick scan, however, showed me this adventure is more of a sandbox mini-setting than anything. There is one main adventure and a few side quests, as well as a whole new adventuring class (6 whole pages!). If you need....heck, just want....a sandbox adventure for levels 4-9 and have a buck lying around.....go for it! Just a head's up you don't have a lot of time left......

2014.05.14 Edit ......and now that time is gone.

Free GM Resource: Adventure Generator from Dizzy Dragon Games

Have you ever been.....I don't know....a little rushed when it came to GM prep for your regular game? Have you ever just wished you could sweet-talk the players into a simple dungeon delve, perhaps something you didn't have to plan out to the nth degree?

Fear not fellow Frugal GMs because the fine folks over at Dizzy Dragon Games have an absolutely free random dungeon generator that provides a lot more than a simple map!

You have three main options to generate your random dungeon: d20 Pathfinder, Moldvay Basic, and Moldvay/Cook B/X. You can set the appropriate party level or just say "screw it" and go completely gonzo (er...random).

I'm a huge fan of the fact that map is randomly generated and even has the rooms numbered, with additional information (assuming you want this) about the contents of some/most of the rooms. It is easy enough to populate a dungeon, tweak the rooms as you see fit, and be on your way in short order.

Spend less time prepping and more time killing!  If that isn't your style, then just spend more time checking out the rest of Dizzy Dragon Games' freebies......

Frugal GM Review: Herick's Dungeons (Dungeon Rooms)

Today I was perusing DriveThruRPG and came across Herick's Dungeons. Two things quickly came to my attention: that it was a 41 page PDF and that it was under $2.

A large file at a cheap price...along with a good-looking preview file.....yep, I was gonna pull the trigger on buying this file.

The download itself is quite straight-forward. You get 39 pages of Dungeon Rooms, 1 page of doors, and another page of arches. There is not one bit of wasted space outlying the artist's other offerings, ads, or really anything else....not even instructions for putting together the doors or arches. Now I don't think instructions are needed, so this isn't a detractor at all.

The PDF assumes you are printing on A4 paper, which is great for everyone in the world except Americans. We have to either reduce the page size by about 6% or just print the file up on legal-sized paper. I don't think this is that big of a deal. I do have two minor qualms however. The first is a common gripe that the PDF is password-protected so I cannot open it up in Photoshop so I can use these rooms in a virtual table-top. The second is that the tile layout is all the same from room to room.  It looks like the artist basically made one big room and then just brought in the walls to make smaller rooms.

Now for under $2, it might be a lot to expect the floor tiles to be shuffled around some, but I think that minor effort would have gone a long way in increasing the visual appeal of the rooms. The artwork is great, don't get me wrong, but the rock-steady floor pattern from room to room is not so appealing.

Still, it is a minor qualm and I think overall this is a great download that a Frugal GM can get a lot of use out of.